K.L.R.G.
Member
Hello, I've purchased Exanima today immediately after seeing Skallagrims Video about it.
And I have to say that I really like the combat approach. It's one of those systems that you have to practice forever to get good at, but that's fine by me (I'm a huge fan of the Soul's Games and the first Mount & Blade).
So here are some of my thoughts starting as a total noob.
First thing I does to get a grip of the game was going in the Arena Mode and train for an hour. The one thing I would suggest here is after you die in the arena to make a quick for restarting with the same character and equipment. I always went on exit and went back to the arena-mode. After some time I found out that if I hit ESC and "Start new Game" I could go back to the character-settings ... Still a little bit tidious ...
A simple selection of option after you die like:
"Restart"
"Go to Character Configutation"
"Go to Weapon Equipment"
"Exit"
would be the most comfortable solution in my mind.
Another thing ... You should hint somewhere ingame that changing the bodyshape is actually changing your attribute (which is a really cool feature by the way). I only read it on the site somewhere. Although I really wonder if size matters too? I always played on maximum size and don't know if this would be a disadvantage. Actually being bigger should help in close combat (the moments when you literally stand in an enemy), while being smaller should make you a harder target from a distance in my opinion.
Another thing I haven't seen so far ... Are there any knives in this game? Especially against fighters with longer weapons that can't do much against you if you come close enough you should be able to knive them down in my opinion ... (In reality a spearman would drop his weapon and draw a shorter weapon anyway ...)
...................................................
I haven't come far in the actually game yet because like I said ... It's a system that'll take a long time to get into so I won't comment much on the battlesystem yet. Without practice I can't objectively say anything about it aside from looking incredibly realistic for a videogame ...
But what I can say is something about the other stuff from the perspective of a totally noob playing for the first time (and I have a suggestion for the Equipment-System at the end of this, so I hope you read to the end):
First of all I really like the fact that you can use improvised weapons like chair legs or barrel lids as shields. Really great stuff that I'm looking since forever in games ...
But there comes the tidious part ... I haven't get past more than two enemys yet. Most of the time the enemys killed me easily because I had that long iron nail thing(???) and couldn't do anything useful with it ... Later I found out that you actually can use the barrel lids and so on ... (Maybe you should consider a hint about that or another letter in your inventory that suggest stuff like "Use everything you can get as a weapon" or something like that ... This might really help players who start without any let's play knowledge ...)
I also tried a stealth approach which helped me getting a clue of the area before I stumbled into an enemy and get butchered. Maybe I should have tried that more but anyway ...
One of the things I tried to use are the physics. Especially putting ladders and chairs over enemys to block them with some mixed success ... It doesn't helped much but it's still strange that you can put stuff on the enemys ...
And I'm still unsure if the skyrim-bucket trick worked or not ...
Sometimes the enemys react, sometimes not. Their perception is a bit strange. Sometimes they can see you even if you hide behind a door in the dark and sometimes not. I'm also not sure if they react to sound or just light ... One trick to attract them was laying a torch on the ground ... Most of the times they went there looking although you didn't get a really good surprise-bonus ... Most of the times they just maimed me again although I should have atleast be able to land a blow in their back or something like that ...
Another thing ... I read in your first note that appears when the game opens for the first time, that not all enemys will attack you instantly ... ... ... WHY?
Is there some ingame reason like the plague-thing in Dark Souls? In one room there was that enemy that just doesn't attacked me (the forge??) And I went in took some stuff and wanted to go out and I had that moment where she stood there not attacking and I wanted to go past her out again and then she attacked ... It was frustrating ... " I thought we where cool with each other, dammit ... ;____; "
... Not that I mind if they are strange Zombie-thingys ... But ... There should be some ingame hint. There is being thrown into a strange situation and there is what the fuck ... Because I don't know if this was a bug ... Wasn't she attacking me because she didn't see me or was it supposed to be??? As long as they have no clue what so ever players will think this is a bug more than anything else ...
I would love it if there would be peaceful guys who don't decide at some point to attack you. Or peaceful areas like in Ultima Underworld ...
By the way ... I love the fact that you can actually block doors with some objects ... Although I'm not a big fan of opening/closing the doors ... It's annoying that you have to stay away from the door or else it wouldn't open if you pull it in your direction ... It feels really stiff and I hope that in the future the character will just step back or something (atleast outside of the combat mode)
..........................
So yeah ... I'm not that far yet and my current strategy is taking shield and leg of a chair, trying to kill somehow one of the first enemys with an axe and get it. It's the only useful weapon I found yet and to be honest ... it's really frustrating to do the same tidious thing over and over ...
"Pick up barrel-lid" "Pick up leg of chair" "Got to the Door" "Lay down the torch" "Equip barrel lid and leg of chair" "Open the door and try not to die" "Pick up the Axe" "Go to the end of the corridor" "Block 2 of 3 doors with ladder and plank" "Open one door and die or get so heavily wounded that the next enemy will get you anyway"
-> And that's the stuff I was doing over and over and over and over until I decided to stop the game. I'm sure there are better ways to get decent weapons in the beginning but the only way to figure that out is going to google it ... Which is in my opinion not a good solution ... because even if I sneak around and might find somewhere a weapon/armour or something like that ... It will be gone the moment I die so it isn't worth sneaking and exploring stuff yet ...
Instead I would suggest an idea for a system I come up with lately that would fit perfectly:
..............................
New Item/Equipment Solution:
..............................
As soon as you have found any kind of object in the game (Picked it up and put it in the inventory for example) you can choose that specific kind the next time from the beginning.
So you picked up barrel lid and chair leg. Fine, from now on you can pick it to equip your character in the beginning with it. And if you have killed the guy with the axe and picked that up, next time you start new you can have that axe from the beginning and do not have to defeat that guy again and again and again ...
Same goes with aquiring armour and so forth ...
This would increase the gameflow very much and it would also enhance the drive to find every possible item for sake of collecting it ...
If you fear that this might have some imbalance you could combine that with a simple shop-system. You start with 200 gold in Level 1 ... The starting cloth costs all in all 15 to 50 gold and additional weapons/armours cost around 25 to 100 gold ... So the player can't use the big heavy plate mail in the first level ...
But as soon as you reach level 2 or have killed a nr of enemys or have any other progression your starting gold improves ... So if you have reached level 2 you can start to buy equipment worth of 400 gold for example ...
.................
Maybe you have some other solutions in mind or maybe you get better equipment after completing the levels but in my opinion it's to frustrating even for the more or less frustration resistant Souls-Game-Crowd ... Maybe there is an easy to find equipment in the beginning ... I haven't found it yet and I don't want to spoil the game with google/let's plays ... that's what point&click-adventures are for ...
I hope you can use that feedback to some degrees and I'm really excited to see where this game will go from this point on. It has great potential!
So here are some of my thoughts starting as a total noob.
First thing I does to get a grip of the game was going in the Arena Mode and train for an hour. The one thing I would suggest here is after you die in the arena to make a quick for restarting with the same character and equipment. I always went on exit and went back to the arena-mode. After some time I found out that if I hit ESC and "Start new Game" I could go back to the character-settings ... Still a little bit tidious ...
A simple selection of option after you die like:
"Restart"
"Go to Character Configutation"
"Go to Weapon Equipment"
"Exit"
would be the most comfortable solution in my mind.
Another thing ... You should hint somewhere ingame that changing the bodyshape is actually changing your attribute (which is a really cool feature by the way). I only read it on the site somewhere. Although I really wonder if size matters too? I always played on maximum size and don't know if this would be a disadvantage. Actually being bigger should help in close combat (the moments when you literally stand in an enemy), while being smaller should make you a harder target from a distance in my opinion.
Another thing I haven't seen so far ... Are there any knives in this game? Especially against fighters with longer weapons that can't do much against you if you come close enough you should be able to knive them down in my opinion ... (In reality a spearman would drop his weapon and draw a shorter weapon anyway ...)
...................................................
I haven't come far in the actually game yet because like I said ... It's a system that'll take a long time to get into so I won't comment much on the battlesystem yet. Without practice I can't objectively say anything about it aside from looking incredibly realistic for a videogame ...
But what I can say is something about the other stuff from the perspective of a totally noob playing for the first time (and I have a suggestion for the Equipment-System at the end of this, so I hope you read to the end):
First of all I really like the fact that you can use improvised weapons like chair legs or barrel lids as shields. Really great stuff that I'm looking since forever in games ...
But there comes the tidious part ... I haven't get past more than two enemys yet. Most of the time the enemys killed me easily because I had that long iron nail thing(???) and couldn't do anything useful with it ... Later I found out that you actually can use the barrel lids and so on ... (Maybe you should consider a hint about that or another letter in your inventory that suggest stuff like "Use everything you can get as a weapon" or something like that ... This might really help players who start without any let's play knowledge ...)
I also tried a stealth approach which helped me getting a clue of the area before I stumbled into an enemy and get butchered. Maybe I should have tried that more but anyway ...
One of the things I tried to use are the physics. Especially putting ladders and chairs over enemys to block them with some mixed success ... It doesn't helped much but it's still strange that you can put stuff on the enemys ...
And I'm still unsure if the skyrim-bucket trick worked or not ...
Another thing ... I read in your first note that appears when the game opens for the first time, that not all enemys will attack you instantly ... ... ... WHY?
Is there some ingame reason like the plague-thing in Dark Souls? In one room there was that enemy that just doesn't attacked me (the forge??) And I went in took some stuff and wanted to go out and I had that moment where she stood there not attacking and I wanted to go past her out again and then she attacked ... It was frustrating ... " I thought we where cool with each other, dammit ... ;____; "
... Not that I mind if they are strange Zombie-thingys ... But ... There should be some ingame hint. There is being thrown into a strange situation and there is what the fuck ... Because I don't know if this was a bug ... Wasn't she attacking me because she didn't see me or was it supposed to be??? As long as they have no clue what so ever players will think this is a bug more than anything else ...
I would love it if there would be peaceful guys who don't decide at some point to attack you. Or peaceful areas like in Ultima Underworld ...
By the way ... I love the fact that you can actually block doors with some objects ... Although I'm not a big fan of opening/closing the doors ... It's annoying that you have to stay away from the door or else it wouldn't open if you pull it in your direction ... It feels really stiff and I hope that in the future the character will just step back or something (atleast outside of the combat mode)
..........................
So yeah ... I'm not that far yet and my current strategy is taking shield and leg of a chair, trying to kill somehow one of the first enemys with an axe and get it. It's the only useful weapon I found yet and to be honest ... it's really frustrating to do the same tidious thing over and over ...
"Pick up barrel-lid" "Pick up leg of chair" "Got to the Door" "Lay down the torch" "Equip barrel lid and leg of chair" "Open the door and try not to die" "Pick up the Axe" "Go to the end of the corridor" "Block 2 of 3 doors with ladder and plank" "Open one door and die or get so heavily wounded that the next enemy will get you anyway"
-> And that's the stuff I was doing over and over and over and over until I decided to stop the game. I'm sure there are better ways to get decent weapons in the beginning but the only way to figure that out is going to google it ... Which is in my opinion not a good solution ... because even if I sneak around and might find somewhere a weapon/armour or something like that ... It will be gone the moment I die so it isn't worth sneaking and exploring stuff yet ...
Instead I would suggest an idea for a system I come up with lately that would fit perfectly:
..............................
New Item/Equipment Solution:
..............................
As soon as you have found any kind of object in the game (Picked it up and put it in the inventory for example) you can choose that specific kind the next time from the beginning.
So you picked up barrel lid and chair leg. Fine, from now on you can pick it to equip your character in the beginning with it. And if you have killed the guy with the axe and picked that up, next time you start new you can have that axe from the beginning and do not have to defeat that guy again and again and again ...
Same goes with aquiring armour and so forth ...
This would increase the gameflow very much and it would also enhance the drive to find every possible item for sake of collecting it ...
If you fear that this might have some imbalance you could combine that with a simple shop-system. You start with 200 gold in Level 1 ... The starting cloth costs all in all 15 to 50 gold and additional weapons/armours cost around 25 to 100 gold ... So the player can't use the big heavy plate mail in the first level ...
But as soon as you reach level 2 or have killed a nr of enemys or have any other progression your starting gold improves ... So if you have reached level 2 you can start to buy equipment worth of 400 gold for example ...
.................
Maybe you have some other solutions in mind or maybe you get better equipment after completing the levels but in my opinion it's to frustrating even for the more or less frustration resistant Souls-Game-Crowd ... Maybe there is an easy to find equipment in the beginning ... I haven't found it yet and I don't want to spoil the game with google/let's plays ... that's what point&click-adventures are for ...
I hope you can use that feedback to some degrees and I'm really excited to see where this game will go from this point on. It has great potential!
